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stefoodie
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| Posted: Oct 02 2010 at 7:56am | IP Logged
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Confession: I've never graded any of my kids' work. My thinking is since I'm with them practically 24/7/365 I have a good idea of where they are, roughly if they're doing A, B or C -worthy work in any area.
Now that ds is in high school and enrolled in Kolbe, he finds he's motivated by grades. Seeing this, the younger 2 are wanting to see grades too.
So! My question is:
How do you grade? I don't mean how to grade let's say a 30-item Math quiz or Latin worksheet. Those are easy enough. I mean
how do you determine what items get how much weight?
Is this an arbitrary thing, or is it the same thing across the board, i.e., same rules for all children? If not, how do you determine what to do for each child? Do you ever change things halfway, like giving more emphasis to daily work instead of to a final paper?
I also confess to not having paid much attention in college -- as long as I was maintaining my desired average I didn't care how I got there, whether through quizzes or papers or projects. I never got exactly how grades were weighted and "grading on a curve" was just a phrase to me which people seemed to complain about (never bothered to understand it). I had enough on my mind adjusting to life and school in the US to worry much about those details  .
 Help please! Thanks 
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stef
mom to five
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Mackfam
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| Posted: Oct 13 2010 at 5:53pm | IP Logged
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I've hated leaving your question out here hanging, Stef! It's been waiting for me in my inbox...along with a few other threads I'm hoping to get to soon!!!!
How do I grade???
Well, since I assess using a child's narration of his/her reading of various subjects, that's how I assess knowledge of a subject. Having said that, I am required to turn in letter grades for our cover for all students enrolled. Here's how I come up with them:
I combine a few different methods. I used to do weight what was important to me and assign what I felt was an appropriate percentage representation of their work. Here's how that looked:
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Attention offered to the subject matter - weighted the heaviest. Is the child able to narrate well after one reading? Are the narrations conveying their knowledge of the subject? Worth 40% of the term grade.
Effort - Is my child giving a good effort? Complaining a lot? Grumbling about work to be done? When the work is actually done, is it clear that this student gave his best effort? Worth 20% of the term grade.
End of term examination - These are oral for my elementary students, transitioning into written for middle school students, and fully written for high schoolers. I ask essay type narration questions from my students. I might also ask for a list of all the names a student can remember reading about in history, and then we go back through the list and I ask the student to recall one or two things about each of the names he listed. High school essays would be more difficult and would reflect the term's study, but I think you're looking more for elementary type input here, right? Let's see...other term examinations for my elementary students...
(TOTALLY RANDOM AND OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD...representing various elementary ages/grades)
** Label this map of Europe with as many countries as you can remember from our weekly map quizzes
** Tell me as much as you can remember about the order of the liturgical year and the colors associated with each portion of the year.
** Recite one poem from this term from memory.
** Write a poem. You can choose your topic based on our reading of Christopher Columbus or the Burgess Bird Book or John James Audubon.
** Write Newton's laws of motion and illustrate (or tell me about) an example of each.
** Name the 4 seasons and tell me something that happens in each season.
** Tell me the differences between a mammal and a reptile.
** Write 2 sentences for me - one should be a statement, and one should be a question. Spelling counts. Please use at least one proper noun in the sentence.
I come up with some kind of question - whether oral, illustrated, written, or otherwise - to be representative of the term's work for every subject we study. The end of term exams count for 40% of the overall grade.
Additional projects completed - these are like bonus questions at the end of an exam for me, and I value them accordingly. If special projects have been chosen and completed, they may add up to 5 points to a final grade. **Note** this is different from a high school lab which I factor into a grade in a percent rather than as a bonus. |
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Lately, I've been working more with...
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| ...RUBRICS and enjoying them!! Rubistar is a free site that I've been using a little. I like looking around and working with it, though I think in the end I'll probably just make up my own rubrics. It does help to look at a few and see how they're put together though. I have one son that really thrives on knowing expectations up front, and the rubric system of grading allows me to weight what we value as a family and offer clear expectations to him up front. It's not a tool I use to motivate at all, so I want to say that up front, but for a child that self destructs without clear expectations, it can be another useful tool. Here is a page with a gazillion rubric makers (not all are free). |
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Hope something here helps...and sorry it took me so long to get to your great thread!!!
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19 , ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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Topic: How do you grade?
